Chương 77: Chapter 76 - The Hidden Road

For the first hour, Kira kept waiting for the seven men Orris had warned her about. She checked the road behind her whenever it curved enough to hide distance. Let Zenyatta slow twice without reason. Stopped once at a stream long enough for anyone following at a careful pace to gain ground. No one appeared. By the second hour, she had narrowed it down a little. Either they were far enough back that she couldn't see them, good enough not to be seen, or they had stopped following. Three possibilities.

One useful answer between them: nothing was close enough to act on yet. Maybe Orris had sent them far enough wrong that they'd given up. Maybe they'd decided Briarwake wasn't worth the trouble. Maybe they were somewhere behind her being patient in a way she'd regret later. No tracks she trusted. No witness she could question without announcing herself. No reason to double back and turn uncertainty into contact.

She wasn't going back to ask, and she certainly wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth when she was already sitting on one. By midmorning, Kira was sure that mounting more easily at Briarwake hadn't been a fluke, and she'd stopped thinking about the saddle at all. Her balance felt solid. Her thighs weren't squeezing at every awkward angle the way they used to. She wasn't fighting Zenyatta for control of every stride.

The road out of Briarwake ran clean and dry through low country still pretending winter might return. Brown leaves clung to the trees. The sun warmed the air and left the earth unconvinced. Zenyatta walked through all of it with the bored efficiency of an animal who had classified Kira as acceptable cargo and saw no reason to reopen the file. She loosened her left shoulder deliberately. The drop should have shifted her seat. It didn't.

Her core answered half a beat later, quiet adjustment through ribs, hips, spine, and thigh. Zenyatta's ears didn't even flick. She hadn't learned each correction one by one. The body had generalized. Agility was the obvious suspect, except she hadn't spent any points in it. Endurance might explain the steadiness, Vitality the recovery, Kinetic Acrobatics the movement transfer. Or the System was quietly teaching the body to integrate all of them and refusing to expose the formula.

Which left the part she kept circling. If practice could make her better without changing the number, what exactly did the number represent? More capacity? Faster learning? A higher ceiling? The same work with better hardware underneath it? And if both practice and attributes improved the same outcome, where did one stop and the other begin? Bjorn shifted on her shoulder.

"You have been thinking very loudly." Kira glanced sideways at him.

"I haven't said anything."

"No."

"Rude."

"Hmmm." She let Zenyatta carry them another few yards.

"What's the difference between being good at something and having more attribute points in it?" Bjorn was quiet for a few steps.

"Practice changes what you can do with what you have." Kira frowned.

"And attributes?"

"Change what you have."

"That's suspiciously neat."

"It is also incomplete."

"Better."

"A practiced weak body and an unpracticed strong one are not the same thing. Neither are a skilled mind and a larger one. Attributes alter the material. Practice alters the use." Kira's fingers twitched toward her pane. Bjorn noticed. Of course he noticed.

"You have been carrying those points for several days," he said.

"Several days is a normal amount of time to think carefully."

"For some people."

"My caution is being slandered."

"Your hands drift toward your pane when you are not paying attention."

"My hands are extremely dignified."

"Your hands have many virtues, child. Dignity has not been first among them since I have known you." She made a face at the road. Bjorn settled again, entirely pleased with himself. Kira let the road carry them a while. It wasn't a road by Earth standards. No asphalt. Sometimes not even gravel. Just packed dirt with old stone showing through where wagons had convinced the country to remember a path. The road bent around whatever the builders had decided was easier to leave alone. She liked that.

It reminded her of old codebases that looked ugly until you tried to replace them. Then you found out every strange little decision had survived three disasters and somebody smarter than you had already tried the obvious fix.

"Bjorn."

"Hmmm."

"If I wanted a town with a training yard, an inn, and just enough civilization that no one panics when a woman mutters into a notebook, where would I go?" Bjorn was quiet for a moment.

"There was a lake town to the northwest once," he said.

"Hartmere."

"Once."

"Yes."

"How once?"

"Hmmm. Long enough that the lake may have changed its banks, the road may have changed its mind, and the town may have decided to call itself something else."

"That's not a reassuring travel recommendation."

"No."

"But there was a yard?"

"There was ground where fighters trained. Whether it is still used that way, I cannot say. Towns often remember where to put their yards even when they forget why." Kira filed that away. Bjorn did this. Dropped centuries into casual conversation and then looked at the road like he hadn't just made time misbehave.

"Northwest," she said.

"Yes."

"Good." She spent the rest of the morning testing small failures. Dropped shoulder. Loose knee. Overturned wrist. Breath held too long. Head turned too sharply while Zenyatta stepped around a rut. Each time, her body caught more than it missed. Each correction wrote itself somewhere behind thought. By noon, her stomach informed her that lunch had failed to occur. She stopped beneath a thin stand of trees and ate jerky, hard bread, and the last apple Orris had pressed on her before she left the lodge.

Zenyatta received a quarter of the apple because ceremony mattered. Bjorn watched the road with the patient interest of a ruby philosopher who had once seen an ocean and found roads only mildly less amusing. Before she packed again, Kira took out the soccer ball. It came from the side pocket of her saddlebag like the artifact of a much stupider religion. White panels. Familiar pattern. Still faintly absurd in a world of gods, dungeons, and things with too many teeth. The manual came next.

She sat with her back against a tree and flipped through the marked pages. Ball control. Touch drills. Footwork ladders that required no ladder. Hip rotation. Balance recovery. All the little humiliating fundamentals she had once treated as survival because the ball had been the first thing this world gave her that didn't try to kill her. She set the ball in the road dust and stood. Zenyatta watched with mild suspicion.

"Don't judge me," Kira told her. The mare judged her. Kira started small. Sole rolls. Inside touches. Outside touches. Toe taps. The ball moved under her feet with a level of obedience it absolutely hadn't shown the first week after her arrival. She moved around it, then with it. Her ankles corrected. Her hips rotated. The ball slipped too far once and she caught it with the inside of her foot before it escaped. That was new. She tried it again, faster. A tight figure-eight. A drag back.

A clumsy little turn from the manual she hadn't been able to perform without looking like a drunken heron. This time it worked. Not beautifully, but it worked. Kira stood there in the road, one foot on the ball, breathing harder than the effort deserved.

"Soccer growth confirmed," she said. Bjorn looked down from the saddle.

"Hmmm. A noble discipline."

"It's ridiculous how much of my life depends on footwork now."

"Feet are often important to walking."

"Brilliant. Thank you." She practiced another ten minutes, long enough to register the pattern. The improvement carried across unrelated movement patterns. Riding hadn't taught her that turn. The body was transferring what it learned. She wrote that down before they moved on. By mid-afternoon, Kira passed through a village whose name she never learned. Wood smoke. Low roofs. Tired people. A baker's window. A trough for Zenyatta.

Kira bought two apples and enough bread to make tomorrow less disappointing, then kept moving. The place had no intention of becoming interesting, and Kira respected that enough not to interfere. The crossroads came an hour later. South led toward Merehaven and the coast. Liora was there. The library was there. People who knew her were there, or would know how to ask after her. The southern road carried obligations she wasn't avoiding exactly, but also wasn't currently selecting.

Northwest led toward the old Hartmere road. Northwest wasn't north, exactly, which Kira decided was enough geographic distinction to keep Bjorn's old unease about whatever waited that direction filed under later. Maybe Hartmere still existed. Maybe it had been swallowed, renamed, rebuilt, burned down, elevated into respectability, or replaced by a town full of people who would laugh at ancient bears with outdated maps. She could work with that. No one in this world knew she was about to choose it.

Caelan was in Sol Aureth. Sela was in Sol Aureth. Liora was in Merehaven. Maelis was wherever Maelis wished to be, which was less a location than whichever conversation she'd decided still needed finishing. No quest marker pointed northwest. Caelan hadn't told her to go there. Neither had Liora, Maelis, or a god. She needed a yard, a room she could lock, enough food to recover properly, and several days without having to kill anything while she measured herself. Kira turned Zenyatta northwest because she wanted to.

The last six weeks had rarely bothered asking what she wanted. That shouldn't have mattered as much as it did. It did anyway. Bjorn didn't comment. Excellent bear. The country opened as they rode. Frontier softened into worked land. Fences replaced scrub. Houses gained slate roofs, proper chimneys, and dogs that ran out to bark with great conviction before remembering they had no follow-through. By dusk, the seven men still hadn't appeared.

Kira moved them from immediate problem to unresolved problem, which was less reassuring than it sounded. Kira slept that night in a barn for two coppers and the cost of a bowl of stew. The farmer's wife gave her the usual look country women gave hooded young women traveling alone: sharp enough to ask six questions and polite enough to ask none of them aloud. Kira answered in kind. Bjorn sat motionless near her folded cloak through the night, eyes dimmed to embers.

If he was pretending to sleep, he had committed fully to the role. Kira respected craft. The town appeared late the next afternoon. Bjorn's old lake town had grown far beyond anything Kira expected. It was a town that had eaten three smaller towns and was considering a fourth.

A wall still circled the older center, low and pale and mostly symbolic now, but newer districts had grown beyond it in organized bands: storehouses, boat sheds, mills, a second market road, smokehouses, fenced yards, clusters of slate-roofed homes, and a long quay reaching into the lake. The water caught the late sun along its western edge and threw pale gold over the rooftops. Working boats moved in neat lines. Wagons waited near the north road. Kira reined Zenyatta in.

"Bjorn."

"Hmmm."

"Your lake town has been eating its vegetables."

"So it seems."

"Are we sure this is Hartmere?"

"We are sure this is where Hartmere was."

"That's not the same thing."

"No." They rode closer. A road marker stood near the approach, carved in clean recent letters: HARTHOLM Under it, in older worn stone half-swallowed by the newer base, another word remained barely legible. Hartmere Kira looked at Bjorn. Bjorn looked at the sign then up at her. He definitely wasn't grinning.

"Hmmm," he said.

"Don't you dare look smug."

"I was not."

"You were historically adjacent to smug." She rode on. The gate road was busy without being crowded. Wagons in. Wagons out. Three watchmen watched her without challenging. Kira pulled her hood lower from habit, realized no one cared about a hooded woman on a good horse with a ruby bear on her shoulder, and rode through. One watchman nodded. She nodded back, and that was the whole conversation. Three watchmen. Busy road. Enough traffic to disappear into. More than one way back out if she needed it. Better.

The old center had the settled confidence of a place that had been useful long enough to stop trying to look important. Fishmongers shouted along one side of the market. A cooper's yard stood open to the street. A shrine to Meletrifys occupied a corner near the lake road, all blue-green tile and practical offerings. Ariana had a smaller shrine near the inner wall, clean and well-kept, its lamp burning steadily in the afternoon light. Bjorn turned his head as they passed an old stone trough.

"That was there," he said softly. Kira looked at it. The trough was chipped, repaired, and older than half the street around it.

"Congratulations," she said.

"One piece of your memory remains municipally useful."

"Hmmm. That is a noble fate." She found the inn within a quarter hour. Three signs hung around the central market, but the third one won. The Black Axle. Black wagon wheel painted over red boards. Wide stableyard. Warm windows. And behind it, visible from the street, a packed-earth training yard about twenty paces square with practice weapons racked along one wall. Two men were drilling at half speed. Older and younger. The older corrected the younger's footwork with small precise gestures.

Neither looked up as she passed. A town that took its yard seriously. Better and better. The hostler was a girl of maybe fourteen with hay in her hair and the resigned competence of someone who had handled horses since before she could spell horse. She accepted Zenyatta's reins, gave the mare one brief professional look, approved of what she saw, and led her away without demanding a conversation.

"What's your name?" Kira asked.

"Nessa."

"Zenyatta bites?" The girl glanced back at the mare.

"Not unless you deserve it, I'd wager."

"Correct answer." Nessa gave the smallest possible smile and disappeared into the stable. Kira loved Hartholm a little more. Inside, the common room was warm, busy, and not stupid about smoke. Long bar. Tables. Fire. Staircase. The innkeeper was a heavyset woman in her fifties with iron-grey hair, capable forearms, and the patience of someone who had run an inn long enough to become immune to novelty. Kira asked for the largest room, and the woman measured her again.

"Largest is built for parties."

"Good."

"Four beds. Long table. Two chests. Window faces the yard."

"Perfect."

"For how long?"

"A week." The innkeeper named the price, and Kira paid in silver. The woman's eyebrows didn't move, but her attention to the coin sharpened by a visible degree. Somewhere behind her eyes, Kira had been recategorized.

"Name's Marda Kelwen," the innkeeper said.

"If you break furniture, I charge replacement."

"Reasonable."

"If your bear breaks furniture, I charge double." Bjorn lifted his head and looked decidedly offended. Kira said, "He's extremely polite."

"Makes it worse when they know better."

"If anyone comes asking after a hooded woman with a ruby bear," Kira said, "you haven't seen either of us." Marda's eyebrows rose slightly, but she didn't ask why.

"Common enough request," she said.

"Costs extra for memory that specific." Kira paid it. Marda slid a brass key across the bar.

"Meals from sixth bell to ninth. Bathhouse out back, half-copper. Hot water after fifth bell. Stable's fed. Don't open the window after dark unless you mean to."

"Why?"

"Owls."

"Real answer or evasion?"

"Real answer. Big owls. Don't ask."

"Noted." Kira took the key and went upstairs. The room was large, plain, clean, and warm. The window opened over the yard. The older man below had finished drilling and was packing away practice weapons while the younger sat on a bench wiping sweat from his neck. The yard would be empty by evening. Kira set her pack on the long table. Then she got out her notebook.

The first notebook, Liora's gift, lived in her saddlebag and contained three weeks of dense notes on her body, the System interface, every skill she had observed, and every magical effect she had been close enough to record without dying. That one wasn't leaving her possession unless someone pried it from her freshly regenerated hand. This was the working book: newer, rough paper, lightly ruled.

It held the duskmaw fight notes, cliff climb measurements, three pages of bind-pattern experiments, a sketch of the dawn garden, two pages on the relic dagger and the sensation of drawing it, and an early hypothesis on how Kinetic Acrobatics calculated momentum vectors. She opened to a clean page, wrote the date, and sat with lake-light on the table and the smell of dinner coming up through the floorboards, then began listing every experiment she intended to run before spending a single point.

The list took until the light failed. By then, the page had filled with abbreviations, arrows, sub-bullets, and three diagrams she hadn't meant to draw. Bjorn had settled on the windowsill an hour earlier and said nothing. The yard below emptied. Two cats crossed it and conducted unknown business with great seriousness. Kira read the list twice, crossed out two redundant tests, circled three priorities, and closed the notebook.

Then she went downstairs, ate the best stew she had had since the Kasov circus, paid extra for a slice of honeyed bread from a glass case, and returned upstairs to sleep. She slept nine hours. When she woke at fifth bell, she lay still and stared at the ceiling. Nothing hurt. No one needed her. No one had tried to kill her overnight. The window was still closed because of owls, apparently.

"Suspicious," she whispered. Bjorn sat on the second bed with his head tucked low and eyes dim.

"Hmmm," he said immediately.

"Fake sleeper."

"Hmmm."

"I respect the commitment." By sixth bell, she was in the yard. The older man from the previous evening was already there. Of course he was. This morning he had a boy of fifteen or sixteen working guard transitions with miserable concentration. The man saw Kira enter. His eyes took in the hood, sword, boots, posture, hands.

"Yard's open," he said.

"Copper for the morning. Two for the day. Don't break the racks."

"Two for the day." She paid. He pocketed the coppers.

"Brannoc Fenwick."

"Kira." His eyes flicked once toward Bjorn.

"Not asking."

"I appreciate that." Brannoc returned to ruining the apprentice's morning. Kira took the open end of the yard, stretched for a quarter hour, and got to work. First experiment: reserve drain at rest versus reserve drain in motion. She summoned the Sphere. Six-foot radius. Eighteen to cast. Maintenance: one every three seconds. She had measured that outside Briarwake. Today she needed to know whether movement changed the tax. It didn't.

Walking, sprinting, three Steps chained through the sprint - the maintenance held flat at one every three seconds regardless. Kira dropped the Sphere, grabbed the notebook, and wrote: Sphere maintenance is movement-independent. Cast cost and ability cost are separate. Maintenance taxes field existence, not activity inside field. She underlined it twice. The urge to explain the discovery aloud nearly hurt. Brannoc was busy teaching the boy how not to receive a low stab with his liver. Wrong audience.

Bjorn, perched on her shoulder, had probably felt the underline through her soul and was therefore already informed. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Bind modification proved more expensive than applying the heavier form correctly the first time - four additional points to upgrade in place, against three or six to cast the right size from the start.

The Wraithfire Blade accepted a hand-width of length variation without extra cost now, which it hadn't two weeks ago. Shape variation was a control function, not a cost function. She wrote both down and moved on. Then she tried something new. The yard had a row of practice posts against the back fence. Dead, seasoned wood, scarred by years of practice. Kira walked the blade across one in a clean controlled cut. The reserve barely moved. She struck again, harder. The blade buried itself three inches into the post.

Reserve dropped one point. She stared at the post. She had been operating on the quiet assumption that cutting things cost what holding the blade cost plus some small contact tax. Either she had been wrong about that for two months, or this post in particular was something the blade didn't consider work. She pulled one of the apples from her saddlebag. Held it up. Struck. The reserve dropped seven points in the instant the blade made contact.

"Oh," she said.

"Oh." She wrote, very quickly: Wraithfire Blade - target-dependent cost. Dead seasoned wood: ~1 point per strike including penetration. Fresh fruit tissue: ~7 points per strike. ("Non-organic" is wrong, obviously. Dead wood is still organic. Fix vocabulary before it embarrasses me in front of future-me.) Variable may be living/fresh tissue, System target recognition, or some property I haven't isolated.

Need leather, butchered meat, living plant, dead flesh, hostile flesh under controlled conditions, which is a horrible phrase. Engagement mechanism unknown. Will think on this later when I am not actively being a person who slices fruit in a public training yard. Brannoc looked across at her again. Kira held up the half-apple by way of explanation. Brannoc looked back at his apprentice with the expression of a man who had previously believed his morning had a ceiling. Wraith Step at two feet, four feet, six feet.

Six points each. Flat-rate up to current maximum. Range doesn't scale linearly with cost. Interesting. Exploitable. Across the yard, Brannoc's apprentice fell over for the third time. Brannoc said something too quiet for Kira to hear. Whatever it was, the boy got up different. Good teacher, Kira thought. He was patient enough to let the body fail until the lesson had somewhere to land. Caelan had done that too. The thought didn't hurt as much as it once would have. Annoying.

Before she left the yard, she ran one more test. Healing. There was no bruise to measure. Bruises rarely lasted long enough to measure properly anymore, which was rude from a data perspective. So she used the small belt knife to make a shallow cut along the outside of her left forearm. Brannoc noticed. Of course he noticed. His eyes shifted to her from across the yard. Kira lifted the notebook with her other hand.

"Science."

"That answer doesn't improve the situation," he said.

"I'm not bleeding on your yard."

"You're bleeding in my yard."

"Temporarily." He stared at her for a long moment, then returned to the apprentice with the weary discipline of a man who had decided not to adopt new problems before lunch. Kira watched the cut. Thirty seconds: bleeding slowed. One minute: clotting visible. Three minutes: edges tightening. Six minutes: sealed enough to wipe clean. Twelve minutes: angry red line, no open wound. She wrote quickly. Baseline healing still obscene. Need post-Vitality comparison. Repeat same depth after spend.

Try not to look like a lunatic in front of drillmaster. She paused. Flipped back several pages until she found the duskmaw entry. Read her own handwriting from the cedar outside Briarwake. Read it twice. Then turned forward and wrote: Compare duskmaw HP-tick recovery, Vit 14: first tick 93→94% in 12 min, second 9 min, third 7 min. Shallow cut full-closure today at Vit 14: 12 min to red-line. Either coincidence or correlated.

Hypothesis: shallow-cut full-closure interval at given Vit ≈ first HP-tick interval at same Vit. Possible that local closure and System-mediated HP-tick recovery share a regulator. Possible that they don't and the numbers are matching by accident at this Vit value. Test: if Vit +3 shortens the closure interval by roughly 25–33%, first HP-tick on next deep wound should land at ~8–9 min vs 12. If the numbers track, the regulator is shared. If they don't, they're independent and I just learned something else.

Bjorn shifted on her shoulder.

"Hmmm."

"Not now."

"I said nothing."

"You thought something extremely loud." He didn't deny it. By midmorning, her operating envelope looked less like fog and more like a map drawn by an enemy she intended to rob. She opened a clean page and wrote: Will: reserve capacity. Likely primary factor. Test after Intelligence. Intelligence: reserve capacity plus construct quality? Affects shape, size, Step smoothness. Test before Will to isolate. Endurance: throughput. Channel width, strain tolerance, sustained output. Body toughness probably secondary.

Vitality: recovery rate. HP, fatigue, channels, tissue repair. Test via controlled cut. Strength: physical force, grip, construct leverage, vault/swing work. Test with pushups/pullups/carry. Agility: balance, dodge, foot speed, reaction through body. Test with soccer drills, handstands, walkovers. Perception: input processing. Eyes to action. Presence: social pressure. Already loud enough. She drew a line under that last entry and didn't investigate further.

Then she closed the notebook, went inside, ate in a corner with a view of the door, and returned to her room. Locked door. Checked window. Measured the room. That was important. She moved the beds to one side with much muttered apology to Marda Kelwen's floorboards, cleared the middle, then summoned the Sphere at full extension. The edge pressed against the walls, but the room was large enough to estimate. She marked the floorboards with chalk. Radius before spend: approximately six feet.

She dismissed the Sphere, then opened the attribute pane. Nineteen points available. Her pulse kicked harder as the attribute pane opened. She had held the points for only a few days, barely long enough to pretend she was being responsible. Intelligence first. Six points. Intelligence: 22 → 28 Something in the back of her skull clicked into alignment. The problem-space she had been holding all morning simply lost clutter. Connections that had been nearby became available.

The shape of the Sphere tests, the Bind geometry, the Step flat-rate: cleaner now, as if someone had wiped condensation off glass she hadn't realized she was looking through. Which was immediately annoying, because Intelligence was now the thing evaluating what Intelligence had changed. Observer contaminated. Great.

"Oh, I'm going to be horrible about that," she whispered. She summoned the Sphere again. It bloomed wider. Kira stopped breathing for half a second. The edge pressed farther into the room, not enough to reach the true maximum, but enough to measure against the chalk. She marked the floor again.

"Bjorn."

"Hmmm."

"Intelligence affects Sphere size."

"Yes."

"Careful. We're not fully confirmed until I test Will."

"A wise distinction."

"Do not sound proud of me. It's distracting."

"Hmmm." She measured as best the room allowed. The increase looked close to a foot of radius, maybe slightly less, from six points of Intelligence. Not final. Not clean. But real. She wrote: Int +6 increased Sphere radius. Approx +0. 8 to +1. 0 ft in limited room test. Need outdoor measure. Cast cost unchanged. Maximum reserve unchanged. Construct clarity improved immediately. Then came Endurance. Four points. Endurance: 14 → 18 Her breathing changed. Diaphragm dropping, ribs widening.

The fatigue remained, but it no longer sat as heavily in her shoulders. A held Wraithfire Blade felt smoother through the channels too, less like water forced through a narrow hose. She wrote that down. Vitality. Three points. Vitality: 14 → 17 Her hands warmed. The warmth came immediately. Circulation, maybe. Tissue response, maybe. Her arms prickled once from elbow to fingertip and then steadied. She flexed her fingers.

"Oh, I'm going to like you." Then she took the knife and made a second shallow cut on her right forearm, matching depth and length as closely as she could. Bjorn watched without blinking.

"Science," she told him.

"Hmmm."

"Judgment noted." This one closed faster. Not wildly faster. Not cinematic. But measurably. Twenty seconds: bleeding slowed. Two minutes: edges tightening. Four minutes: sealed. Eight minutes: angry red line, no open wound. Eight minutes. Close enough to her prediction to be interesting. Still one wound, one depth estimate, one body. Absolutely not enough to start congratulating herself. Kira wrote: Vit +3 improves tissue closure.

Controlled shallow-cut interval dropped from 12 min to 8 min: ~33% shorter time to red-line. Need repeat under fatigue, after channel strain, and post-combat. Also I am officially the kind of person who self-inflicts shallow test wounds. Growth is complicated. If the same regulator governs both, Vit 17 should push the next deep-wound HP tick from twelve minutes toward eight or nine. Test when the opportunity occurs. Do not manufacture opportunity. Will. Two points.

Will: 21 → 23 Her thoughts seemed to gain structure. The room stayed the same, but holding herself steady inside it suddenly required less effort. That one was harder to measure because the thing doing the measuring was also the thing that felt steadier. Extremely rude stat. She summoned the Sphere again. Same room, same chalk, same eighteen-point cast. The radius didn't visibly increase beyond the Intelligence mark, but the cast took a smaller percentage bite of reserve.

She wrote: Will +2 increases reserve capacity and mental anchoring. No obvious Sphere radius increase. Confirms Int is primary for size/construct quality. Will likely capacity/stability, not geometry. Strength. Two points. Strength: 15 → 17 Her grip closed around the pencil before she meant it to. The wood creaked. Kira looked down. Set the pencil very carefully on the table.

"Noted." Then she tested the pullups. The room had no bar, which was rude but solvable. Kira opened the Sphere and fixed a Wraithbar in the air at shoulder-width grip, the same old trick refined into cleaner geometry now that Intelligence had polished the edges. She tested it with one cautious tug. It held. Of course it held. The useful part was how little attention it took. A month ago, keeping shaped Wraithfire suspended had felt like persuading physics not to file a complaint.

Now the bar sat there with the calm obedience of a tool waiting to be used.

"That's cleaner," she said. Bjorn's ears angled forward.

"Less strain?"

"Less argument." She had been close before. Close enough to hate it. A one-arm pullup had been less impossible than insulting: all the pieces nearly there, none of them willing to cooperate at the same time. Before the spend, using a stable beam outside Briarwake, she had managed twenty-five strict pullups. Twenty-six if she allowed the last one to be a little bit of a crime. She had written it down with the honesty of a scientist and the resentment of a person who wanted twenty-six.

Now she jumped, caught the Wraithbar, and pulled. Ten came easily. At fifteen her shoulders warmed. By twenty, the old difficulty should have arrived. It didn't. Twenty-five came clean. Twenty-six came cleaner. Kira grinned at the wall.

"Oh, we are absolutely counting that one now." She kept going. Thirty came clean. So did thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, and thirty-four. Thirty-five started, rose halfway, and turned ugly enough that she dropped before it could become a lie. She landed lightly, breathing through a laugh.

"Thirty-four strict. Up from twenty-five. Twenty-six if I was being morally flexible." But she wasn't done. She wiped her hands on her pants, jumped, caught the Wraithbar with her right hand only, and locked the position. Pulled. The first inch was difficult. The next twelve inches were possible. Her chin cleared the bar. She held there for half a breath, lowered with control, and pulled again. The second came up slightly less clean. But it came. She dropped, switched hands, tried the left. Two reps.

The third stalled at her eyes and she let go before lying about it. She landed lightly and stared at the bar. Different bar. Different day. And Intelligence had already changed how cleanly the construct held. Not clean enough to build a curve from. More than clean enough to establish that something large had changed. She hadn't been able to do a single one-arm pullup yesterday. Two points had crossed a line she hadn't known she was standing that close to.

Which meant performance didn't scale cleanly enough to infer the stat underneath it. Two linear points could still cross a nonlinear threshold. Annoying. Also extremely important.

"Bjorn."

"Hmmm."

"Two points of Strength."

"Two points of Strength."

"I wasn't prepared for the threshold."

"Hmmm. Few people are." Bjorn looked at the floating bar.

"A considerable improvement," he said.

"Considerable? Bjorn, I just added nine honest pullups, absolved a fraudulent tenth, and went from zero one-arms to four across both sides."

"That does sound important."

"It's extremely important." She wrote quickly. Strength 17: major improvement. Grip, pulling strength, pushups, Wraithbar stability interaction. Pullups: 25 strict baseline, 26 questionable. Post-spend: 34 strict, 35 failed half-rep. One-arm pullups: 0 yesterday → 2 right, 2 left today (third stalled). Performance response near Strength 17 is strongly nonlinear. Cannot tell yet whether the attribute scaling itself is.

Strength affects physical output directly and may improve leverage through constructs if construct is externally stable. Test with swings, vaults, climbing, weapon binds. Then she sat still. The spending had taken less than an hour with tests. The settling took longer. It moved through her in waves too subtle to be spectacle and too real to ignore. She noticed it in her breathing, her hands, her spine, the weight of herself in the chair, even the pulse at her wrists. Bjorn didn't speak. Excellent bear.

After several minutes, Kira rolled her shoulders. When she stood, the change followed her. Her weight settled faster, her feet found the floor without searching, and the turn toward the window happened before she had time to manage it. Her hips lifted without complaint. Her knees received instructions and forwarded them immediately, for once displaying the kind of professionalism she had always suspected knees might be capable of in theory. She still had two points left. She left them alone. For now.

"Bjorn."

"Hmmm."

"This is wild."

"It is."

"Why did no one tell me it would feel like this?"

"Few people hold so many points at once."

"That sounds like something I should have been warned about before I became irresponsible."

"You were warned about many things."

"And yet."

"Hmmm. And yet." He agreed unhelpfully. She tested the Sphere once more. Same radius as after Intelligence. Same sharper geometry. Same eighteen cast. Same smoother channel feel under Endurance. Same deeper reserve under Will. She wrote until her handwriting tried to outrun the pencil. Then she tested a Step across the room. Six points. Flat rate held. Landing smoother. The little twist of vertigo she had learned to tolerate had thinned almost to nothing. Wraith Bind on bedpost. Three points.

The construct resolved with clean edges, sharper than the morning's bind, the geometry readable in a way that made her teeth want to smile. Almost as an afterthought, she checked her core pane. Heart of the Wraithfire Court - Rank 1 - 18% She paused. Sixteen had become seventeen yesterday on the road, somewhere between the small unnamed village and the crossroads. She had registered it the way she registered them now - small interior settling, percentage up one, no work she could point to.

Six weeks in, they had stopped being events. Seventeen had just become eighteen. A focused morning of structured work. She sat very still. The background condensation was always there, running quiet under everything she did, even when she slept. Caelan had taught her the theory and she had built her method, layered Halv and Marris and Dorne on top of his bones, and the work had become so integrated that she didn't consciously feel it most days. The percentage climbed.

She had stopped paying close attention to the rate because the rate had stopped being interesting. One tick after two days of background work. One tick after a morning of deliberately pushing the same systems. Bad data. Very interesting bad data. She wrote: Yesterday's tick: roughly two days of road, background condensation only. Today's tick: focused morning of structured ability use plus active refinement attention. Focused structured work produced the next tick far faster than passive road condensation.

Exact multiplier unclear because neither interval was clean. But the gradient at the start of a focused session is much steeper than I had been assuming. Filing as actionable. Schedule structured testing daily. She sat on the bed and looked at her hands.

"I need to summon Seralyth." Bjorn's ears angled slightly.

"For duration?"

"And texture. And distance. And whether she's more substantial."

"And also because you wish to speak with her." Kira looked offended.

"That was fourth on the list."

"Hmmm."

"Fine. Third." Bjorn didn't answer.

"Second, but only because the other tests are related." His silence became extremely bear-shaped. Kira narrowed her eyes.

"You're getting very expressive for someone who says hmm as a worldview."

"Hmmm." She closed the curtains, checked the door, checked the window, then sat with the late afternoon sealed around her. The bond lived behind her sternum like a door built inside bone, closed most of the time and waiting for her hand on the latch. She reached through it. Wraithfire gathered. The room cooled. Seralyth resolved beside the table in pale armor, crimson-black detail, and silver-white eyes.

Seralyth looked from Kira to Bjorn, then over the room and the chalk marks on the floor before returning her attention to Kira.

"You spent."

"I spent most of them."

"How many remain?"

"Two." Seralyth's mouth softened into the small almost-smile that had begun appearing since the dungeon.

"Restraint."

"That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"I once called your judgment sound."

"Once."

"It was earned."

"We need to test you," Kira said. Seralyth turned slightly, attention sharpening.

"Manifestation?"

"Duration, distance, substance, strain. Also whether you feel different from your side."

"Begin." Kira's shoulders loosened. Of course Seralyth's answer to affection was a test protocol. She got out the notebook.

"First. Texture." Seralyth stood silent for several breaths.

"Cleaner," she said at last.

"Cleaner how?"

"The line between us has widened. I do not press as sharply against the edge of your reserve. There is more room in the bond before strain begins." Kira wrote.

"That's the bridge thing," she said.

"Last time you felt like a blade laid across a narrow bridge. Now?" Seralyth considered.

"The bridge is wider. The blade is less likely to cut the edges." Kira paused, pencil above paper.

"That's excellent."

"Yes."

"Substance," Kira said. Seralyth lifted one gauntleted hand and pressed it against the table. The wood creaked. Kira's pencil stopped moving.

"Again." Seralyth pressed harder. The table shifted half an inch across the floor. The bond tightened behind Kira's sternum as Seralyth put more weight into the table. Clean and immediate. No alarm. No tearing strain. Kira wrote faster.

"You're more physically anchored."

"Yes."

"Lift something." Seralyth looked around the room, then bent and closed both hands around the back of the nearest chair. The chair rose an inch from the floor. Kira felt the cost sharpen at once.

"Hold." Seralyth held it. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. The drain didn't spike, but it accumulated. Physical interaction wasn't a cliff. It was a weight.

"Enough," Kira said. Seralyth set the chair down with care. Kira wrote: Substance improved. Sustained physical contact possible. Exertion increases drain proportionally. Chair lift by direct contact: stable for 15 seconds. Repeat later with measured reserve. Seralyth read the last line.

"Direct contact."

"Important distinction. You're more real, not suddenly convenient."

"Convenience was not among my vows."

"Tragic. I could use help moving beds." Seralyth regarded her. Kira sighed.

"Fine. Can you reach for your old light?" Seralyth's eyes fixed on something distant. The room cooled. Wraithfire thinned along the edges of her armor, and for one breath something pale and gold stirred beneath it. Then it collapsed. Seralyth's hand closed.

"No," she said. Kira wrote anyway. Paladin channel response present. Immediate failure, but response confirmed. Seralyth looked at the note.

"That is an optimistic interpretation."

"That's why I'm the scientist."

"Distance," Kira said. Seralyth looked toward the door. Kira looked toward the window. Seralyth's attention sharpened.

"Is there trouble outside?"

"Possibly." Seralyth moved half a step closer. Kira unlatched the window and eased it open, scanning the eaves, roofline, and darkening slice of courtyard below.

"Owl trouble," she said. Seralyth paused.

"Owl trouble."

"Apparently." From the table, Bjorn said, "Owls can be very troublesome." Kira looked at him. Seralyth looked at him. Bjorn remained perfectly solemn.

"They are silent hunters," he said. Kira let that stand because arguing with him would only make the room stranger. She leaned out the window. No owls. No movement in the courtyard except lanternlight shifting across packed earth and the long shadow of the training yard fence.

"Clear," she said.

"Second floor drop. Courtyard below. Yard beyond that. We test distance and vertical displacement together." Seralyth looked down through the window. Then back at Kira.

"You wish me to jump."

"I wish to know whether the bond measures distance like a straight line, a path walked, or some hideous third option that will annoy me personally."

"That sounds like a yes."

"It's a very scientific yes." Seralyth stepped onto the sill with the calm precision of someone who had once worn armor into worse ideas. Kira held the bond carefully behind her sternum.

"Ready." Seralyth dropped. No stumble. No dramatic landing. She hit the courtyard below in a controlled bend of pale armor and Wraithfire, then straightened and looked up. The bond stretched. Kira felt the vertical first. A downward pull through the sternum, clean and strange, like some part of her had been tied to a weight dropped from a height.

"Fine," she called softly. Seralyth crossed the courtyard, then the training yard. Sixty feet no longer marked the edge, the way it once had. At one hundred, the old warning pressure arrived, familiar and tight behind her ribs.

"Continue," Kira said. Seralyth reached the far side of the yard and stopped beneath the weapon racks. Somewhere past one hundred thirty, the Wraithfire inside Kira's reservoir began falling with visible intent.

"Oh, that's rude," she whispered. She realized what she was actually measuring wasn't the path Seralyth had walked. It was the straight line between them - through the drop, across the courtyard, into the yard. Direct distance, not walked distance.

"Bjorn," she said.

"The bond cares about the straight line between us, not the ground she covered getting there." Bjorn's eyes warmed.

"The hidden road."

"That's an unreasonably good name for a hypotenuse."

"You asked a bear."

"Fair." She did the estimate in her head, then hated it enough to write it down. Second floor height. Courtyard span. Yard distance. Direct bond distance, not walked path. Approximately one hundred thirty-five to one hundred forty feet total from current position. Previous functional range approximately one hundred feet. New upper boundary: not comfortable, but stable. The drain kept sharpening into a steep slope. Seralyth remained steady below, one pale hand resting briefly against the training yard fence.

"This is near my current limit," she called. Kira felt that too. The bond had narrowed into a hard bright line behind her ribs.

"Agreed. Return." Seralyth crossed back at once. The pressure eased steadily as she returned, becoming familiar again near sixty feet. Seralyth reached the courtyard wall, looked up, and with one clean movement caught the stonework, climbed, and returned through the window like gravity had been consulted and politely overruled. Kira closed the window behind her and latched it.

"Any owls?" Bjorn asked.

"No," Kira said.

"Tragic missed opportunity for your expertise."

"Hmmm." Seralyth stepped down from the sill.

"Result?" Kira wrote quickly. Distance test: previous functional range approximately 100 ft. Current maximum tested range approx 135–140 ft direct bond distance including vertical drop. Bond appears to care about direct distance, not walked path. Drain increases sharply past 100 ft. At 140 ft, idle manifestation likely unsustainable beyond 8–10 min. Combat at that distance: terrible idea. Combat near Kira: maybe 4 min, probably less under heavy exertion. She paused, then added: Hypotenuse confirmed. Annoying.

Bjorn looked at the word.

"What is hypotenuse?"

"The hidden road."

"Hmmm," Bjorn said.

"It should have a better name."

"It absolutely should." Seralyth regarded the notebook.

"You name your enemies strangely."

"Only the ancient ones."

"Duration," Kira said.

"I want idle hold. Ten minutes, twenty, an hour if the drain stays sane."

"You wish to keep me out as company."

"I wish to keep you out for information. The company is incidental." Seralyth's mouth moved.

"Liar."

"Also that." The air loosened. Kira leaned back and let the bond breathe. They talked while the numbers moved, and Kira gave Seralyth Hartholm. The lake town Bjorn had once known as Hartmere, now grown beyond its old walls and renamed with the kind of self-assurance that suggested committees, tax ledgers, and at least three arguments about signage. The Black Axle. Marda Kelwen. Nessa in the stable. Brannoc Fenwick in the yard, trying to teach an apprentice how not to meet a low stab with his liver.

Seralyth listened without interrupting until Kira reached the morning's experiments. Then her eyes narrowed slightly.

"You practiced Step and cut yourself open in front of a child."

"A shallow cut." Seralyth waited. Kira sighed.

"I needed the baseline."

"Then say that first." Kira pointed the pencil at her.

"For the record, I was basically helping the kid practice. So was Bjorn." Bjorn, from the windowsill, lifted his head.

"Hmmm." Seralyth's gaze shifted between them.

"You took Bjorn to the yard."

"He could have stayed here, I suppose. He's basically a windowsill ornament at this point." Very slowly, Bjorn looked toward the actual windowsill.

"Hmmm," he said at last.

"From your perspective, perhaps I can see the comparison."

"Lovely," Seralyth said. Kira tried not to smile and failed.

"I needed numbers before spending. Real numbers. Sphere maintenance, Bind modification, Blade contact cost, Step range, healing interval. Then I spent in sequence and retested." Seralyth's attention sharpened fully.

"Good." Kira blinked.

"That was easier than expected."

"You prepared. You isolated variables where possible. You accepted controlled pain without letting it become spectacle."

"I'm pretty sure Brannoc thought it became spectacle."

"That is his burden." Kira smiled down at the notebook. Seralyth stepped closer to the chalk marks on the floor, then to the Wraithbar residue still faintly visible in the air where Kira's sense remembered it.

"You are working," she said.

"I'm working."

"Good. Work is correct."

"You're not going to tell me to slow down."

"No."

"Or that I'm overconfident."

"You are appropriately confident. That is different." Seralyth paused.

"The danger is that your judgment may fall behind you."

"Fall behind?"

"You are now better than you were this morning. In a month, if this pace holds, you will be better again by a visible margin. Your estimate of yourself may lag behind the change. So will your enemies'." Lag. Using yesterday's map because she hadn't noticed the terrain had changed underneath it. That could get her killed just as efficiently as arrogance. Kira sat with that. Then she reached for the notebook. Seralyth watched her write it down. My own estimate of myself will lag behind the change. So will theirs.

"That's disgustingly useful," Kira said.

"It should be." The reserve drain stayed steady, and Seralyth remained more solid than Kira had ever seen her. Kira kept glancing at her because the difference kept catching at the corner of her vision. Seralyth's edges were less misted. Her armor held light differently. When she moved, the floorboards answered more convincingly beneath her weight.

"You're more here," Kira said. Seralyth looked down at her own hand.

"Yes."

"Does that bother you?" A pause.

"No." But the answer had weight in it. Kira let it sit. Seralyth had begun remembering things. Not grand revelations. Small ones. Her sister's hands. The field outside her childhood house. The smell of rain on training leather. The first time she held a sword, and the moment she understood what carrying one would ask of her. Mirelia hadn't spoken again since the dungeon. Seralyth didn't read that as abandonment.

"The mother of vengeance is waiting, I think," Seralyth said.

"To see what I am now." Kira liked that. Mirelia, apparently, was the kind of goddess who waited before naming a thing. That tracked. They talked about Sela. The quest was complete. Caelan had delivered her. Sol Aureth was safer than anywhere Kira could have taken her herself. None of that stopped Kira from wanting to see Sela with her own eyes.

"She's with Caelan," Kira said, tapping the pencil against the notebook.

"And Caelan is terrifyingly competent in a way that makes me want to insult him on principle. So that's good."

"It is."

"And Sol Aureth is probably the safest place for her." Seralyth inclined her head.

"I hate probably."

"She has a spine," Kira said.

"People miss that because she's sweet. But she has one. And Caelan is hard, but he's fair. And he likes her."

"He does."

"She'll be okay." Seralyth watched her for a moment.

"Are you asking?" Kira looked down.

"No." She turned the pencil over once in her fingers.

"Maybe."

"You said the quest completed. Divine quests naming a person do not resolve around a corpse. Whatever else is true, she reached the gate alive." Kira stopped breathing for a second. Then started again.

"That's a real thing? Or are you saying it to make me feel better?"

"I am Seralyth Vey. I do not say things to make you feel better."

"Right."

"She is alive. And from what you have told me, she is not fragile." Kira swallowed.

"No," she said.

"She isn't." They talked for twenty-eight minutes. By Kira's count. A few weeks ago, keeping Seralyth present for more than a handful of minutes had felt like holding a door open against a storm. Now the bond could hold her there long enough for conversation without becoming an emergency. Combat would murder the math - four minutes near Kira if they were careful, less if Seralyth fought like the paladin she had been. But distance had improved. Substance had improved. Idle cost was no longer a cliff.

Seralyth could stand beside her now. That mattered. Kira wrote the numbers. Then thanked her. Seralyth nodded, offered Bjorn the same brief unreadable courtesy as always, and dissolved into Wraithfire. The room warmed by degrees. Kira's reserve sat at sixty-three percent. She waited until it recovered. Half an hour later, full again, she opened the attribute pane. Two points remained. She stared at them. Zenyatta's saddle that morning. Her shoulders catching themselves. Her feet landing after each Step.

Her hips accepting motion instead of arguing it into humiliation. Grace. The private competence of moving cleanly through space. She had never had it before Baer. Breathing had been a machine. Eating had been procedure. Turning had been assistance. Her body had spent her first life making every ordinary motion into a negotiation she couldn't win. She had spent years waiting for someone else to move her. Now she could decide to cross a room and simply do it.

Then Baer gave her a body that could learn, and the Kasovs taught it a new language. Now she wanted to know what happened when the language gained better grammar. Two points into Agility. Agility: 21 → 23 Her sense of her own position sharpened first, followed by a subtle settling through her shoulders, hips, and ankles. Then she stood, and almost cried. She stood again. Her weight came under her cleanly, knees and hips aligning without the little corrections she had always needed to manage consciously.

Kira crossed the room in three steps, turned, came back, sat, and stood again. She repeated it eight times. Bjorn watched with polite attention, like a creature who had seen better dances but understood this one mattered more. Then she cleared more floor space.

"Do not break Marda Kelwen's room," Bjorn said.

"I'm not going to break the room."

"Hmmm."

"That was a suspicious hmm." Kira grinned despite herself, then laughed once, low and bright, and kicked smoothly into a handstand. The handstand came easily. That part was old news. No tremor in her wrists. No adjustment arriving half a breath late. No hips hunting for center. She rose into the line and stayed there as if the floor had politely relocated beneath her hands.

She walked forward, backward, sideways, then turned in a tight circle on her palms, slow enough to feel every shift and fast enough to prove the control was real.

"Oh," she said, upside down. Bjorn watched from the table.

"Hmmm."

"Do not hmm at me. I have become load-bearing." She bent her elbows into a slow press, pushed back up, and felt Strength and Agility meet cleanly through shoulders, ribs, core, and palms. The position felt settled in a way it never had before. She came down only because she wanted to write. Handstand: trivial. Weight shifts cleaner. Shoulder stability improved. Inversion feels like alternate stance. She stared at the last phrase. Alternate stance. Interesting. Then she moved. Cartwheel. Handstand turn.

Controlled drop. Shoulder roll. Rise. Walkover. Turn. Low roll. One hand lifting before she chose it, already reaching for Sphere, Bind, Blade, or Step. The room was too small. The ceiling too low. The beds and table in all the wrong places. Her body adjusted. That was the part that made her pause. Her body adapted the chain to the room instead of forcing the room to fit what she'd practiced. Kira stopped on one knee, breathing lightly.

"That," she said, "is dangerous information." Bjorn's eyes warmed.

"Yes." She wrote: Advanced Acrobatics response: major qualitative improvement. Basics now run under low attention. Advanced movements chain faster and adapt better to bad space. Agility 23 approaching preternatural human-equivalent movement. Not Spider-Man. Adjacent neighborhood. She paused. Added: Kasovs would be unbearable about this. Correctly. None of this had come from nowhere. The points hadn't replaced the work. They had amplified it.

Every miserable drill, fall, correction, and repeated movement was still there. The stats had paid interest on training already done. The important question wasn't what a point could do by itself. It was what a point could do to work already waiting underneath it.

"Bjorn."

"Hmmm."

"That's it."

"What is it, child?"

"That. The clean weight. The little settling. That's what people had. All of them. Just walking around with it."

"Yes."

"And now I have it, except apparently mine comes with murder gymnastics."

"Hmmm. A useful variant."

"I'm going to be insufferable about this for at least a week."

"You have always been insufferable about good news. I do not see why this should differ." She wiped one eye with the back of her wrist and pretended she hadn't. Then she opened the notebook again. Agility 23: definite qualitative shift. She paused. Added: Grace is real. Underlined it once. Then, smaller: Worth two points. Worth more. Test scaling later. Handstand work now effortless. Advanced Acrobatics chains significantly improved. Soccer drills need remap. Combat integration likely enormous.

She closed the notebook. Set it on the table. Then got up again, because she could, and crossed to the window with the clean new certainty of her own feet beneath her. The lake outside held the last gold of afternoon. Working boats came in slow across the water. Somewhere below, the inn yard settled toward evening. Hartholm smelled like fish, smoke, damp rope, horse, stew, and lake wind. There was work here. Bind shapes to retest. Step distances to remap. Sphere radius to measure properly outside the walls.

Seralyth-duration to extend. Swordwork to suffer through. Soccer drills to update. A body to learn now that the body was learning back. She had earned the points days ago. Today she'd finally spent them and learned what they could make of work already done. Kira watched the lake. After a while, she said, mostly to the glass, "If anyone tells you the answer to your life is spend the points, believe them."

"Hmmm."

"Just a little." Bjorn didn't answer immediately. That was suspicious. Kira turned her head. The ancient ruby bear sat on the table beside her notebook, very still, his white-gold lattice catching the candlelight.

"What," she said.

"Hmmm."

"Absolutely not. You're making a face."

"I do not have a very flexible face."

"You have a spiritual face."

"I was merely wondering."

"That's worse than a face. Wondering about what?"

"How many points did you place in Presence?" Kira stared at him.

"None."

"Hmmm." The room became very quiet.

"Bjorn."

"Yes, child."

"Why did you say that like a funeral bell."

"Presence is not only social pressure." Kira turned fully around. Bjorn looked up at her with the serene expression of a creature who had never once been in danger of being throttled by someone his own size.

"It influences how strongly your class expresses itself through the world," he said.

"How readily certain evolutions recognize you. How forcefully your abilities impose their shape. For some classes, Presence affects future offers as much as any combat attribute." The day's chart rearranged itself in her head. Intelligence for geometry. Will for reserve. Endurance for throughput. Strength and Agility for the body. Presence had been sitting at the bottom under social pressure like a mislabeled live wire. And she had spent nineteen points without testing it once.

Kira opened her mouth, closed it, then tried again.

"You waited until I spent all my points to mention that?"

"You did not ask about Presence."

"You let me draw a chart."

"It was a very good chart."

"You absolute geological menace." Bjorn tilted his head.

"Hmmm." Kira pointed at him.

"You and I were going to spend tonight watching people with terrible budgets buy impossible houses from the media archive." Bjorn perked slightly.

"The one where they reject structurally sound homes because the kitchen counters are the wrong color?"

"Yes. That one."

"I enjoy that one." Then, because he was ancient and shameless, he added, "You also wrote 'Presence: already loud enough' and drew a line beneath it." Kira looked at the notebook. The notebook, traitor that it was, confirmed the charge. She covered her eyes with one hand.

"I hate when my own documentation testifies against me." Kira lowered her hand.

"We're still watching the house show." Bjorn's ears lifted.

"I am pleased."

"But I am choosing the episodes."

"That seems fair."

"And tomorrow," Kira said, "we're testing Presence. Ability expression, class implications, everything you know and everything you're pretending not to know." Bjorn's eyes warmed faintly.

"Yes, child." She narrowed her eyes.

"You're pleased with yourself."

"I am pleased with you." Kira looked back out at the lake for approximately three seconds before turning to the table again.

"Also, Bjorn?"

"Hmmm?"

"If Presence turns out to control whether I eventually get some absurdly perfect class evolution and I delayed it because I thought twenty-eight was socially embarrassing enough, I'm going to be insufferable about that too."

"I expected no less."

"Good." She opened the notebook again. Under Presence, she added: Not merely social. Bjorn withheld critical information because he is made of crystal and betrayal. Test immediately. Bjorn looked at the line.

"Hmmm. I would perhaps phrase that differently."

"I wouldn't." Kira went downstairs for dinner, came back with honey bread, opened the media archive, and made an ancient ruby bear watch two people turn down a perfectly livable farmhouse because the primary bath had "no spa energy." Bjorn was appalled.